ITALY: Infrastructure manager RFI has awarded a contract valued at more than €1bn to a consortium of Impresa Pizzarotti & C and Saipem for work on the Milano – Roma high speed line through the northern part of Firenze.
The Pizzarotti-led consortium will build a 7 km twin-bore tunnel to separate high speed services from the conventional lines, freeing up capacity on the surface tracks leading into Firenze’s Santa Maria Novella terminus and avoiding the need for through trains to reverse. Running at an average depth of 20 m, the tunnel will start between Castello and Rifredi stations to the north of the city and rejoin the existing line near Campo di Marte in the east.
The consortium will also be responsible for completion of the controversial Belfiore station for high speed services, which was designed by Norman Foster & Partners, under a contract awarded in October 2002. Construction of the station began in 2010, but it is still incomplete.
The slow progress reflects criticism of the fact that the Belfiore hub will be 1 km further from the city centre than the existing terminus. Construction was delayed by two reviews into the project —one in 2017 and one in 2019. Both concluded with a favourable opinion and recommended completion of the new link.
The high speed station will be served by tram route T2, which opened in February 2019, and by a Corcondaria station for regional trains which is to be built adjacent to Belfiore as an addendum to the original project. To further improve the connections between Belfiore and SMN, the construction of a peoplemover link was approved in May 2021.
- Read more about the Belfiore high speed project in the September 2018 issue of Railway Gazette International magazine, available to subscribers in our digital archive. https://www.railwaygazette.com/railway-gazette-international-2018-digital-archive/53875.article
